ATAR 'a strait jacket around our kids': Mark Scott

The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank is a 'strait jacket' around HSC students and should be abolished by universities, says NSW Department of Education Secretary Mark Scott.

Mr Scott said he wanted the current kindergarten to Year 12 curriculum review to examine the future of ATAR, which is calculated on HSC results and used by universities to select students for their courses.

Tom Alegounarias, chair of the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), joined Mr Scott at The Sydney Morning Herald Schools Summit on Monday in his call for reform.

"[The ATAR] is a strait jacket around our kids," Mr Scott said.

NSW Department of Education secretary Mark Scott says the ATAR is dominating the HSC to the detriment of students.Credit:Glenn Hunt

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"We are looking at why there's a relentless pressure and all that attention that goes around the HSC, and in part it's that [students] are so locked up in a very rigid 10-unit boot march over two years.

"And I think the research is amazing. Universities don't need 10 units to make that ranking, they can do it with six units, they can do it with eight, and our senior years of schooling could just breathe a bit more if every given moment wasn't taken up with the ATAR race."

The ATAR is calculated by the Universities Admissions Centre, which is a separate organisation that provides the service to universities..

Mr Alegounarias said his department provided the HSC marks but had no role in the design or calculation of the ATAR.

"I've been to a number of vice-chancellor meetings where the suggestion of using fewer than 10 units has been raised and no one has disagreed, but no one has done anything about it," he said.

Mr Alegounarias said that notionally, state governments are in charge of universities but noted that ministers have little say in how universities admit students.

"It's difficult because the ATAR is still being used, there's a supply and demand issue and it's still used for high-demand courses such as engineering," Mr Alegounarias said.

"I think it's a national issue for the government to consider but I think the overarching issue is about the unforseen effects of demand-driven university places."

Mr Scott said the ATAR increasingly dominated the senior years of school at the same time as universities were finding ways around it.

"The number of students getting in on pure-play ATAR scores and nothing else has never been lower," he said.

"That could change quite quickly if the universities were willing to play ball."

Mr Scott said that opening up the curriculum by changing the 10-unit requirement for the HSC credential and the calculation of the ATAR would be beneficial to students, teachers and ultimately universities.

"The feedback Geoff Masters [who is leading the curriculum review] has had in the first round from teachers is that there's genuinely a thirst for a good curriculum reform," he said.

"It's a pedagogical tetris, it's crammed full.

"[With the ATAR], finally it's us appealing to universities' common sense and self-interest that actually our kids flourishing a bit more in year 11 and 12 and following their interests and going into more depth and developing more skills, that's actually in the interest of the preparation of students to be successful at university."